Liam Denning, Columnist

Is Rick Perry’s AI Energy IPO a Bubble or a Warning? Yes

October 17, 2025 at 9:30 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

AI hungry: Fermi CEO Toby Neugebauer with former US energy secretary Rick Perry. — AI hungry: Fermi CEO Toby Neugebauer with former US energy secretary Rick Perry.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

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The classic stock market bubble is an informational vacuum suspended within a sphere of gloss. The bubble that has enveloped certain, artificial intelligence-adjacent parts of the electricity business fits that description. However, when it comes to the most recent initial public offering in the sector, that of Fermi Inc., there is some useful signal in the noise.

Fermi has several trappings of a bandwagon IPO. Its stated mission is to “power the artificial intelligence (“AI”) needs of tomorrow,” and one of its co-founders is former Texas Governor and Energy Secretary Rick Perry.